"Sere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a bachelor, an exceedingly shrewd man of business, and—some said—a miser. He was turned sixty years of age, and of course had seen many and great changes in Plymouth during his time, yet, although well advanced in the "sere and yellow," was still a hale and hearty man, able to do a hard day's work against the best individual in his yard; and although he had the reputation of being wealthy he lived alone in a little four-roomed cottage occupying one corner of his yard, and ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... of broad-browed ships, To send a child's armada of chips! Instead of the great gun, tier on tier, A freight of pebbles and grass-blades sere! 'Well, maybe more love with the less gift goes,' I growl, as, half moody, I toast ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... whereabouts of Goodge—the Goodge we want—and at eight o'clock was comfortably seated in that gentleman's parlour, talking over the affair of the letters. Tolerably quick work, I think you will allow, my dear sir, for a man whose years have fallen into the sere and ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... may be performed by brave hearts when they leave the fruitful fields behind them and turn with all their hearts to woo the desert that turns her forbidding face to them at their coming, and holds, closely hidden within her sere breast, ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... Sere'na, allured by the mildness of the weather, went into the fields to gather wild flowers for a garland, when she was attacked by the Blatant Beast, who carried her off in its mouth. Her cries attracted to the spot Sir Calidore, who compelled ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... I heard a roaring wind: It did not come anear; But with its sound it shook the sails, That were so thin and sere. ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... destructive worms, and I have ordered a barrel of it from the city. I intend to spread a layer of this Paris green over all our flower and vegetable beds; the contrast thus presented to the dull, sere brown of our lawn will be very pleasing to the eye. In fact, I am not sure that it would not be cheaper to color our whole lawn with Paris green than to attempt to revise it with water, which can be used with legal liberality only between the first of November ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... banners bright From the mill, eaves hoary. Swallows turn'd glossy throats, Timorous, uncertain, When to hear their matin notes, Peep'd she thro' her curtain, Shook the mill-stream sweet and clear, With its silver laughter— Shook the mill from flooring sere Up to oaken ratter. "Bouche-Mignonne" it cried "come down! "Other flowers are stirring; "Pierre with fingers strong and brown ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... ye laurels, and once more, Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forced fingers rude Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, Compels me to disturb your season due: For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... of the year when day gives place to night so suddenly, that the sober calm of twilight even appears denied to us. The streams rushed by, turbid and swollen from the heavy autumnal rains. A rude wind had robbed most of the trees of their foliage; the sere and withered leaves, indeed, yet remained on the boughs, beautiful even in, their decay, but the slightest breath would carry them away from their resting-places, and the mountain passes were incumbered, and often slippery from the fallen leaves. ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... inns are unknown in this wild country. At first the road ran along the bay, but soon it turned into a shallow valley leading to the mountains. The uncultivated country seemed perfectly bare, and the sides of the hills were covered with tall weeds, turned sere and yellow by the burning heat; they often crossed ravines where only a narrow stream still ran with a gurgling sound, and occasionally they met a mountaineer, sometimes on foot, sometimes riding his little horse, or bestriding a donkey no bigger than ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... black Monday for me when school began again after that ideal vacation. The skies they were ashen and sober, and the leaves they were crisped and sere. But anyhow I was still en quatrieme, and Barty was in it too—and we sat next to each ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... poetic fire; and oft sweet song Of purest praise spontaneously has welled From his enraptured heart. Then he would long To leave a world where misery and wrong So much prevail, but yet content to stay And sere his master, his poor saints among; Would try to save those led from God astray, That he might aid Christ's cause ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... huntsman and horn, Shall scare your heaths and coverts lorn, Braying 'em shrill and clear, O; But lone and still Shall lift each hill, Each valley wan and sere, O. ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... the little pine table close to the heap of failing embers, and aided by what light the sulky candle gave, was bending over and trying to arrange a patch on my old hunting-coat. It was an old, old hunting-coat, far gone in the sere and yellow leaf. It was old-fashioned now, though once of proper cut and comeliness. It was disfigured, stained and worn. The pockets were torn down. The bindings were worn out. It was quite willing to be left alone now, hung by upon a forgotten nail, and subject to no further requisition. ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... cannonading ceased and the old man halted in his tracks, his gaze riveted upon the wood. For several minutes he saw no sign of what was transpiring behind that screen of sere and yellow autumn leaves, and then a man came running out, and after him ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... at its height now. For weeks there had been no rain, and the Pacific side of the Isthmus was growing sere and yellow beneath the ceaseless glare of the sun. The musty dampness of the rainy season had disappeared, the steady trade-winds breathed a dreamy languor, and the days fled past in one long, unending procession ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... the winter! When the snow is all about; It may seem a time of trouble for the blossoms peeping out, And the sere leases of the forest and the dead grass of the hills Bring a set-back to the roses and the lilies have the chills; But the world is rolling onward! and the spring is drawing nigh, When the birds will spill their music through the blossoms ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... amid the sere, yellow skeletons of last summer's ferns, if haply winter have forgotten one green leaf for our home vase—in vain we rake, freezing our fingers through our fur gloves—there is not one. An icicle has pierced every heart; and there ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... one rival—Fear; Who follows ever on his footsteps, sent By jealous Fate who calls great joy a crime. While in far ways 'mong leaves just turning sere, With gaze serene and placid, walks Content. No heart ere held these two ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... those spiritual communions made by him sometimes at the close of some visit to the Blessed Sacrament. The book which he used for these visits was an old neglected book written by saint Alphonsus Liguori, with fading characters and sere foxpapered leaves. A faded world of fervent love and virginal responses seemed to be evoked for his soul by the reading of its pages in which the imagery of the canticles was interwoven with the communicant's prayers. An inaudible voice seemed to caress the soul, telling her names and glories, ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... when sirris-shaws were sere, An' the nichts were lang and mirk, In braw new breeks, wi' a gowden ring, Oor Jock gaed ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... Whose branches whined in the light night breeze; You led me down to the water's brink, "The Spring where the Panthers come to drink At night; there is always water here Be the season never so parched and sere." Have we souls of beasts in the forms of men? I fain would have tasted ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... Isis on the pagan picture, we behold a tall and erect cross. The upper fields harmonise with the lower. The Christian painting displays a vigorous and stately tree between two younger palm-trees; the pagan picture has the same symbols; but the middle tree is in the sere and yellow leaf, whilst a Dryad issuing from the roots flourishes an axe to cut it down. The allusion is not to be mistaken. The sun of paganism has set: the axe ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... were ashen and sober, and the leaves they were crisped and sere, as I sat in the porch chair and regarded our neighbor's patch of woodland; and I thought: The skies may be ashen and sober, and the leaves may be crisped and sere, but in a maple wood we may dispense with the sun, such irradiation ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... all right, and much obliged. I do not think I shall take any arsenic; shall send partridges to Mr. Yarrell; much obliged. Ask Edward to BARGAIN WITH Clemson to make for my gun—TWO SPARE hammers or cocks, two main-springs, two sere-springs, four nipples or plugs—I mean one for each barrel, except nipples, of which there must be two for each, all of excellent quality, and set about them immediately; tell Edward to make inquiries about prices. I go on Sunday ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... to dwell upon a phase of life that was like autumn and sere and drifting leaves. It bothered him that the thought of Hannah and Hughie had driven him to think it out. He liked best in heart things to think back, not too far, ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... dull, cold, gray, hopeless desolation of the approach of minter. The hard, wiry grass that thinly covered the once and sand, the occasional stunted weeds, and the sparse foliage of the gnarled and dwarfish undergrowth, all were parched brown and sere by the fiery heat of the long Summer, and now rattled drearily under the pitiless, cold rain, streaming from lowering clouds that seemed to have floated down to us from the cheerless summit of some great iceberg; the tall, naked pines moaned and shivered; ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... men can love a flower Unto Lanciotto was Francesca dear, 'Tis not on such Love wields his jealous power; And therefore Paolo moved him not to fear, Though he so green with youth and he so sere. Nor yet indeed was wrong, the hidden thing Grew at each heart, unknown of each, a year,— Two eggs still silent in the nest through spring, May draws so near to June, and not yet time ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... his finger over a long scar on his face—"here is where the sword of Rome lay open my face, yea, wide open as the lips of a crying child. And on my back, most noble mistress, thou mightest hide thy white fingers in the welts cut by the stinging thong. And seest thou my arm? Here is flesh cooked sere as the shell of a tortoise. Thus have blade and thong and branding iron of Rome marked me with wounds and commanded my lips to silence. Yet have these scars each one a thousand silent tongues crying ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... trunks many a vine, Had bade its graceful tendrils twine; The blossoming grape and jessamine pale, Loading with sweets the summer gale. Not long with hasty step he trod The narrow path and flowery sod, Ere gently o'er the sere leaves' bed A maiden passed with ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... tenuous threads to weave her nest, She seeks and gathers there or here; But spins it from her faithful breast, Renewing still, till leaves are sere. ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... glorious crimson to the scene; this was given by shrubs, not by trees. The tints were certainly, in the larger growths, less delicate here than there; the poplar's chrome was darker, the willow's mottled chrome more sere. But there was the exquisite pale canary of the birch, the blood-red and yellow of the wild rose, which glows in both hues, the rich crimson of the red willow, with its foil of ivory berries, and the ruddy copper of the high-bush cranberry. These, with many other of the berry bearers and the wild-flowers, ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... of verse, if not exactly of poetry, in which Byron reigns undisputedly, though it is far distant from the land of lyrics. In his latest and longest production, Don Juan, he tells us that his 'sere fancy has fallen ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... here Of the yellow leaf and sere, Who are anxious, aye, and ready To respond unto Your call; Yet You pass them by unheeding, And You set our hearts to bleeding! "O," you mutter, "God, how cruel ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... lady almost screamed. "Do I then look so old? Am I in the sere and yellow? Why do you ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... goes And colours hope with fear and love with shame. Rose hast thou called me: were I like the rose, Happier were I than woman: she survives Not by one hour, like us of longer lives, The sun she lives in and the love he gives And takes away: but we, when love grows sere, Live yet, while trust in love no longer lives, Nor drink for comfort with ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... autumnal blooms for sale in the vases which flanked the entrance; the windrows of the rowen, left steeping in the dews overnight, exhaled a faint fragrance; a poor remnant of the midsummer multitudes trailed itself along to the various cafes of the valley, its pink paper bags of bread rustling like sere foliage ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... like a tree In bulk, doth make men better be, Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere: A lily of a day, Is fairer far, in May, Although it fall and die that night; It was the plant and flower of light. In small proportions we just beauty see; And in short measures, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the wither'd leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrub the jay And from the wood-top calls the crow, through ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... and water, which is hardly made more palatable by the appearance of the people watching me feed - a woman in an airy, fairy costume, that is little better than no costume at all, comes forward, and contributes a small bowl of yaort; but, unfortuntaely, this is old yaort, yaort that is in the sere and yellow stage of its usefulness as human food; and although these people doubtless consume it thus, I prefer to wait until something more acceptable and less odoriferous turns up. I miss the genial hospitality of the gentle ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... night and morn, Woods upon woods, with fields of corn Lying between them, not quite sere, And not in the full, thick, leafy bloom, When the wind can hardly find breathing-room Under their tassels,—cattle near, Biting shorter the short green grass, And a hedge of sumach and sassafras, With bluebirds twittering all around,— (Ah, good painter, you can't paint ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... down, I surveyed the grounds laid out like a map: the bright and velvet lawn closely girdling the grey base of the mansion; the field, wide as a park, dotted with its ancient timber; the wood, dun and sere, divided by a path visibly overgrown, greener with moss than the trees were with foliage; the church at the gates, the road, the tranquil hills, all reposing in the autumn day's sun; the horizon bounded by a propitious sky, azure, marbled with pearly white. No feature in the scene was extraordinary, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... For bloom, and fragrance, and the ruby fire Of maple-buds along the misty hills, And that immortal call which fills The waiting wood with songs? The snow-drops came so long ago, It seemed that Spring was near! But then returned the snow With biting winds, and earth grew sere, And sullen clouds drooped low To veil the sadness of a hope deferred: Then rain, rain, rain, incessant rain Beat on the window-pane, Through which I watched the solitary bird That braved the tempest, buffeted and tossed With rumpled feathers down the wind again. Oh, were the seeds all lost ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... object, were left in a human soul. It would turn the eye of America hitherwards with love, gratitude and tears, such as those with which we turn to the walk of Socrates beneath the plane-tree, now sere, the summer hour of Cicero, the prison into which philosophy descended to console the spirit of Boethius,— that room through whose opened window came into the ear of Scott, as he died, the murmur of the gentle Tweed,—love, gratitude, and tears, such as we all yield to those whose immortal wisdom, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... us in society, and the many enthusiastic letters we daily receive, we are led to believe that woman's suffrage is becoming very popular. As both the editor and proprietor of The Revolution are in the sere and yellow leaf, the many attentions and compliments showered upon us are of course from no personal considerations, but so many tributes of respect to the ideas we represent; as such we gratefully accept all that come to us, and thank our hosts of friends ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... is like a fairy dwelling, a gnomic palace built of the aether of dreams. It is tiny and delicate and lovely, and replete with memories of sere leaves in November and of lilies in April. It is a castle of vanished hopes, of dimly-remembered dreams, of sad memories older than the deluge. The dead years circle slowly and solemnly around its low white walls, and clothe it in a mystic veil of unseen tears. And many marvellous stories ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... tops of the tall old trees that overshadowed a stately mansion, where a group of sorrowing friends had collected, to pay the last sad rite, to one of earth's fairest, loveliest flowers. All without wore an air of gloom and melancholy. Ever and anon a sere and yellow leaf would fall with a faint rustling sound, speaking in mournful language to the heart, that all things earthly must decay; and well did the scene accord with the sadness and sorrow that ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... growing lighter outside. Stars faded in a paling blue and the desert showed faint colorings. He tied his necktie. A deep-toned keening set up off to the southward, over the sere and dreary landscape. It was a faraway noise, something like the lament of a mountain-sized calf bleating for its mother. Joe took a deep breath. He looked, but saw nothing. The noise, though, told him that there'd been no cancellation of orders so far. He mentally ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... Athens, for instance, which shocked contemporaries, and which, by the way, has the very large first title of Woman, could only bring a blush to cheeks very tickle of that sere: a yawn might come much more easily. The most shocking thing that the heroine, who is "an attempt to delineate woman in her natural state," does (and that not of malice) is to receive her lover in a natural bathroom. But her adventures are told in a style which is the ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... of men, the essence of all things forlorn in its minor cadences. A gray, clammy day, tinged with the chill breath of coming snow. Thompson missed the sun that had cheered and warmed those hushed solitudes. Just to look at that dull sky and to hear the wind that was fast stripping the last sere leaves from willow and maple and birch, and to feel that indefinable touch of harshness, the first frigid fingerings of the frost-gods in the air, gave him a swift touch of depression. He shivered a little. Turning to his wood box he hastened to build ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Chyne became aware, as the year advanced towards the sere and yellow leaf, that in opposing her wayward will in single combat against a simple little association in the public mind she was undertaking a somewhat ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... parched, long lifting to the blue Of summer's brilliant sky but russet hue Of sere grass shivering in the trade-wind's sweep. Soon, with light footfalls, from their tranced sleep The first rains bid the poppies rise anew, And trills the lark exultant summons, too. How swift at Fancy's beck those gay crowds leap To glowing life! The eager green leaves creep For welcome first; ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... work of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to assist us: such as those of Emile Begin, Elzear Blaze, Depping, Benjamin Guerard, Le Roux de Lincy, H. Martin, Mary-Lafon, Francisque Michel, A. Monteil, Rabutau, Ferdinand Sere, Horace de Viel-Castel, A. de la Villegille, Vallet ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... entering the vestibule, he saw something that he had never seen before. At the end of the passage, below the dark staircase, was a door opening into the Paradou, and he could see the vast garden spreading there beneath the pale sunlight, with all its autumn melancholy, its sere and yellow foliage. The doctor hurried through the doorway and took a few steps ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... painting: individual objects are so much reduced that they no longer appeal to us as distinct subjects, and however uncouth they may be in the reality, they make no impression in the picture; the thin and sere sward may appear rather like a closely shaven lawn or a new-mown meadow. And again, the picture sets a limit to the scene; it frames it, and thereby cuts off all extraneous and confusing ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... is sere and small, From the hills, the brishings off the hills; And then come by the bats and all We cut last year in the hills; And then the roots we tried to cleave But found too tough and had to leave— Polting through the lowlands, ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... the silver and graceful ash, with its pensile branches, and leaves of gentle green, reflecting gleams of happy sunshine. The fall of its leaf, too, is like the fall of his,—it is green to-night and gone to-morrow, it does not sere nor wither." ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... ashen and sober; The leaves they were crisped and sere— The leaves they were withering and sere; It was night in the lonesome October Of my most immemorial year: It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, In the misty mid region of Weir:— It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, In the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the river and the windy sycamore and hastened across the sere grass. "Father, father!" he cried. "Do you know who that is?" In his young voice there was both warning and appeal. Adam Gaudylock, he knew, had spoken to his father, but Gideon had given no sign. Suppose, no matter who spoke, his father would give, forever, no other sign ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... VII. C. 3. De Guahutemallis, Dec. VIII C. 5. Habemus Matec Zungam et Mat Ingam, qui cur Madoc Camber esse nequeat quem in eos partes delatum domestica evincunt Monumenta, ratio nulla reddi potest. Ad antiquitatem, quinque illa Secula sussiciunt quousque altissima Americanorum Memoria, nec sere ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... frost-winds sere The heavy herbage of the ground, Gathers his annual harvest here, With roaring like the battle's sound, And hurrying flames that sweep the plain, And smoke-streams gushing up the sky: I meet the flames with flames again, And at my ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... formerly! The great man denies, ready to deny on the Gospels, to her and to himself; and yet, at bottom, if we read with the microscope, there are symptoms, and it is not deniable. How should it? Leafy May, hot June, by degrees comes October, sere, yellow; and at last, a quite leafless condition,—not Favonius, but gray Northeast, with its hail-storms (jealousies, barren cankered gusts), your main wind blowing. "EMILIE FAIT DE L'ALGEBRE," sneers he once, in an inadvertent moment, to some Lady-friend: "Emilie doing? Emilie ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... And the men for a while doubted and denied—they thought it was the accident of the seasons; and then a branch fell, and they said it was a storm, and such a storm as came but once in a thousand years. At last there could be no doubt that the leaves were thin and sere and scanty—that the sun shone through them—that the fruit was tasteless. But the generation was gone away which had known the tree in its beauty, and so men said it was always so—its fruits were never better—its foliage never ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Then, deep in its quiet mossy bed, Sheltered from sun and shower, The grateful worm spun its winter tomb, In the shadow of the flower. And Clover guarded well its rest, Till Autumn's leaves were sere, Till all her sister flowers were gone, And her winter sleep drew near. Then her withered leaves were softly spread O'er the sleeping worm below, Ere the faithful little flower lay ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... your horse treads down alone The sere damp fern, night after night you sit Holding the bridle like a man of stone, Dismal, unfriended: what thing ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... have grudged this splendid weather very much. The moors are in glory, I never saw them fuller of purple bloom. I wanted you to see them at their best; they are just turning now, and in another week, I fear, will be faded and sere. As soon as ever you can leave home, be sure to write and ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... saying that charges of any kind were difficult of digestion: Yet, even at that moment, Elizabeth had no more attached subjects in England than sere the burghers of the Netherlands; who were as anxious ever to annex their ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... greater changes. He had seen his threescore and ten years; and was fast falling into the "sere and yellow leaf." His hair was getting grey, and his frame, though still active and sinewy, would have yielded under the extraordinary marches he had once made. In dress, there was nothing to remark; his ordinary Indian attire being in as good condition as was ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... sere leaves of the year were falling, I heard, with a heart that was strangely thrilled, Out of the grave of a dead Past calling, A voice I fancied ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... thirty-two Elvira, to the budding younger Lawrences, was hopelessly aged and sere, and Eulalie, in particular, a lately opened blossom of eighteen, made it a matter of daily duty to keep Elvira's soul from closing its eyes, even in the briefest nap, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... of borrowed light, seem like scenery which one has seen in the glance of a mid-day sun, presented again to the dreamy "evening sense" under the soft blue effulgence of the waning harvest-moon; the trees with the sere leaf rustling under the fluttering wing of the night bird; and the dead silence, which is not broken by the internal voice speaking the words that have been spoken by those who lie under the yew tree. In an early leaf of my journal, I find some broken ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... on the wonders of the world, on public games, on colonisation, on winds, on birds, on the rivers of the world, and— ominous subject—a sort of comprehensive history of Greek literature, with a careful classification of all authors, each under his own heading. Greek literature was rather in the sere and yellow leaf, be sure, when men thought of writing that sort of thing about it. But still, he is an encyclopaedic man, and, moreover, a poet. He writes an epic, "Aitia," in four books, on the causes of the ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... New York a "hall bedroom." The sitting-room, beside it, was slightly larger, and they both commanded a row of tenements no less degenerate than Ransom's own habitation—houses built forty years before, and already sere and superannuated. These were also painted red, and the bricks were accentuated by a white line; they were garnished, on the first floor, with balconies covered with small tin roofs, striped in different colours, and with an elaborate iron lattice-work, which gave them a repressive, cage-like ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... Honored names in senate chamber. And the sacred pile was cherished, By each absent son and daughter. Many years beyond this period, (Well I ken the oft told story,) On a sunny day in autumn, When the leaves were "sere and yellow," When the woods were melancholy, There were little children clustered In this notable old school-room; There were little children striving, For the prize-book and the medal, Children conning words in triumph, Down the line of b-a-baker, Children frowning o'er the problems ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... cease, each Christmas bell! Under the holly bough, Where the happy children throng and shout, What shadow seems to flit about? Is it the mother, then, who died Ere the greens were sere last Christmas-tide? Hush, falling chimes! Cease, cease, my rhymes! The guests ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... the family. In the little maple grove to the left, children played about the school-house where the dead President first gathered the rudiments upon which he built to such purpose. The old orchard in its sere and yellow leaf, the dying grass, and the turning maple leaves seemed to join in the ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the dark blue sky. Low down on the horizon are great masses of rain clouds, ragged and angry-looking, and the whole firmament seems to weigh down on the still earth, where everything is burnt and parched, the foliage of the trees hanging limp and heavily, and the grass, yellow and sere, mingling with the hot, white dust of the roads. Absolute stillness everywhere down here by the Yarra Yarra, not even the river making a noise as it sweeps swiftly down on its winding course between its ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... grain were waving on the hill-side, and sere corn-blades rustled in the wind, from the orchard came the scent of ripening fruit, and all the garden-plots lay ready to yield up their humble offerings to their master's hand. But in the silence of the night a greater Reaper had passed by, gathering ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the year is new, Nor changes, when its frosts appear: For the star still shines in its ground of blue, And the pine tree lives when the rest are sere. From the pine my thoughts ascend above To the Tree of LIfe that Heaven adorns; From the star to the Star of my Saviour's Love, That grandly shone in a crown ...
— The American Missionary, October, 1890, Vol. XLIV., No. 10 • Various
... words. It was still spring, a late New England spring, though the unseasonable warmth of the day made it seem summer. The landscape bore the coloring of autumn rather than that of the earlier year. The trees were red and brown and yellow in their incipient leafage. Now and then, among the sere fields, there was a streak of vivid green, or a mound of rich brown, freshly turned earth; but for the most part they were bare. Here and there was the crimson of a new maple; in the distance were the reds and brown of new, not ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... began to pinch, and the young ones longed to see the world; so they must go. The day they started, the whole flock flew to the great house, to say good-by. Some dived and darted round and round it, some hopped to and fro on the sere lawn, some perched on the chimney-tops, and some clung to the window ledges; all twittering a ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... would all his toil be then? When he went home that noon he ate his dinner hastily, then, on his way back to the shop, left the road, crossed into a field, and sat down in the wide solitude, on a rock humping out of the dun roll of sere grass-land. Always, in his stresses of spirit, Jerome sought instinctively some closet which he had made of ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... lay sere and brown like a piece of faded tapestry beneath the November sun that, peering through the dust-laden air, seemed old and worn with his efforts to warm ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... the house-boats and barges, or gather together at King's, or Hall's, and industriously promulgate small talk and tobacco-smoke. All is gay and bustling. Although the feet of the strollers in the Christ Church meadows rustle through the sere and yellow leaf, yet rich masses of brown and russet foliage ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... The field of battle die a noble death. And death need have no horrors unto thee, But unto those to whom this world is bright, Its prospects hopeful and its pleasures keen, And to the healthy and the young death's pangs Are most severe when life is plucked, and from Sere age, when all is ready for the end, Life unperceived goes as from one that sleeps. The gentlest wind brings down the serest leaf. To sever from the parent stem by force The freshest must be plucked, and so with man. And by the righteous and the just, when sore Oppressed ...
— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna
... its brilliant leaves were sere, Or scattered by the Autumn wind, Fierce lightnings struck its glories down, And ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... They came to a sere, bare hillside on which neither trees nor brushwood grew. It amounted to a natural clearing, acres in extent. Lockley swept his eyes around. There were many thick-foliaged small trees attempting to advance into the clear ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... be made before you can fairly take possession; others are broader and easier to enter: a few are very capacious and might be legitimately licensed to carry a dozen inside with safety; nearly all or them are lined with green baize, much of which is now getting into the sere and yellow leaf period of life; many of them are well-cushioned—green being the favourite colour; and in about the same number Brussels carpets may be found. There is a quiet, secluded coziness about the pews; the sides ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... is reached from one side through windings of barren valleys, where the dried-up brooks are fringed, instead of reed, with the grey, sand-loving tamarisk; and from the other side, across a high-lying moorland of stunted heather and sere grass, whence the larks rise up scared by only a flock of sheep or a mare and her foal, and you journey for miles without meeting a house or a clump of cypresses. In front, with the white road zigzagging along their crests, is a wilderness of barren, livid hillocks, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... so few on earth. He was then about sixty-five years of age, of stately, unbending form and face radiant and genial with the florid flush of that Indian Summer which so many Englishmen wear late in those autumnal years that bend and pale American forms and faces to "the sere and yellow leaf" of life. But the sequel proved that he did not abdicate his position too early. In a little more than a year from this event, his spirit was raised to higher fellowships and folded ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... of the demolished abode, made his way through a press of sere cabbage palmettos, and emerged suddenly on the blinding expanse of the sea. The limpid water lay in a bright rim over corrugated and pitted rock, where shallow ultramarine pools spread gardens of sulphur-yellow and rose anemones. The land ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... seemed to possess the power of extracting the very essence of all the odours which summer has stored up in wood and field. There were few flowers now; most of the lilies, which had queened it so bravely along the central path a few days before, were withered. The grass had become ragged and sere and unkempt. But in the corners the torches of the goldenrod were kindling and a few misty purple asters nodded here and there. The orchard kept its own strange attractiveness, as some women with youth long passed still preserve an atmosphere ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... woodlands lover, Dusk October, berry-stained; Wailed about of parting plover,— Thou then, too, of woodlands lover. Fading now are copse and cover; Forests now are sere and waned. ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... "The sere wounded one, O sweetest Dulcinea of Toboso, sends thee the health which he wants himself. If thy beauty disdain me, I cannot live. My good Squire Sancho will give thee ample account, O ungrateful fair one, of the penance ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... earthly resting-place in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, on Wednesday, the 22nd February. During the day large numbers visited the sorrowing house, and gazed for the last time on the features of the revered dead. As was to be expected, the larger number were, like the venerable deceased, far into "the sere and yellow leaf," and many who had known him for a long time could scarce restrain the unbidden tear as a flood of recollections surged up at the sight of the still form cold ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... northerners, the birds, return to their southern plantations. The mountains are left bleak and sere. Solitude settles down upon them in drizzling mists. The traveller is beset, at perilous turns, by dense masses of fog. He emerges for a moment into more penetrable air; and passing some gray, abandoned house, sees the lofty vapors plainly eddy by its desolate door; just as from the plain you ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... to-day, ole f'la," Lord Jasper continued, coming over to Henry and taking hold of his arm. "Thirty-one. I'm getting on in years, ole f'la, that's what I'm doing ... sere and yellow, so to speak ... and a chap my age doesn't want to be bothered with a damn play. He wants something ... something substansl!..." He fumbled over the word "substantial" and then fell on it. "Something substansl," he repeated. "Now, if you ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... was dropping slowly into the west, leaving behind him a deep red glow that illuminated the hills, and burnished the windows of the sick-chamber. The wind moaned, and, sweeping the sere leaves at intervals, threatened a tempest. There was a solemn stillness in the parsonage, around whose gate—weeping in silence, without heart to speak, or wish to make their sorrow known—were collected a host of humble creatures—the poorest but sincerest friends of Ellen—the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... And what let be, While on earth we tarry, We shall cast Like leaves at last Which the sere oaks carry. ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... Versate diu quid sere recusent Quid valeant humeri. And, Ego nec studium sine divite vena, Nec rude quid profit ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... the dominant tone of which was green. It was green, green, green—the blue-green of the springing year, and sere and yellow green and tawny-brown green of autumn. There were orange green, gold green, and a copper green. And all these greens were rich green beyond description; and yet the richness and the greenness passed even as we gazed upon it, going ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... mournful, slow-eyed kine With hazel-shielded horns, and gave their milk Gravely to merry maidens. Low the sun Had fallen, when, Patrick near the summit now, There burst on him a wandering troop, wild-eyed, With scant and quaint array. O'er sunburnt brows They wore sere wreaths; their piebald vests were stained, And lean their looks, and sad: some piped, some sang, Some tossed the juggler's ball. "From far we came," They cried; "we faint with hunger; give as food!" Upon them ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... lands of the outer world were born of the sea, before even the Land of the Sun (Mu) and the Land of the Sea (Atlantis) arose from molten rock and sand, there was land here in the far south. A sere land of rock plains, and swamps where slimy life mated, ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North
... was long; the road ill-formed, leading for the most part across a sere and desolate country, with nothing to relieve its barrenness except long stretches of the great spear-headed reeds. At noon the heat was intense; the little cavalcade halted for half an hour under the shade of some black towering rocks which broke the monotony of ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... how the queenly locks of Marie Antoinette were whitened in one night of agony. Perhaps my own dark tresses were crowned by premature snow. I had not seen myself since the green of summer had passed into the "sere and yellow leaf," and perhaps the blight of my heart was visible on my brow. When I was alone with Edith, I surprised her by asking if my hair were not white. She smiled, and bringing a toilet glass, held it before me. What was my astonishment to see my hair curling in short ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... wreaths will look unseemly. Here, perhaps, an everlasting Amaranth, and, close by its side, some weed of an hour, sere, yellow, and shapeless. Their very beauties will lose half their effect, from the bad company they keep. They rely too much on story and event, to the neglect of those lofty imaginings that are peculiar to, ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... suffices quiet hearts, which seems to come forth to such from every dry knoll of sere grass, from every pine-stump, and half-embedded stone, on which the dull March sun shines, comes forth to the poor and hungry, and to such as are of simple taste. If thou fill thy brain with Boston and New York, with fashion and covetousness, ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... am I of lovers sad and sere For waiting long drawn out and expectation drear. My patience underneath the loss of friends and folk With pallor's sorry garb hath clad me, comrades dear. Abasement, misery and heart-break after those I suffer who endured before ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... of falsehood and of fear That brands the future with the past, and bids The spirit wither and the soul grow sere, Hovers or hangs ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Struck with palsy, sere and old, Waiting at the gates of gold, Spake he with his dying breath: "Life is done, but what is death?" Then, in answer to the king, Fell a sunbeam on his ring, Showing by a heavenly ray: "Even this shall ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... keeps A patient watch over the stream that creeps Windingly by it, so the quiet maid Held her in peace: so that a whispering blade Of grass, a wailful gnat, a bee bustling 450 Down in the blue-bells, or a wren light rustling Among sere leaves and twigs, might all ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... inexorable will, and powder, paint, and crafty clothing can no longer hide his ravages, then the virtuous woman triumphs, probably for the first time in her life. They are both old, she and the courtesan, but she is sometimes beautiful—old, grey, and sere, but venerable, charming—and little children love her, and younger women bring their troubles—ay, and their joys, reverently to her, feeling a benediction in the touch of the pure, withered hand. While the courtesan—alas! ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... round white throat above the collar of green velvet—woodland green—darker than the green of the cloth she wore. You were glad she had chosen that color because she was going for a walk with him; and green would enchain the eye out on the sere ground and under the stripped trees. The flecklessness of her long gloves drew your thoughts to winter rather—to its one beauteous gift dropped from soiled clouds. A slender toque brought out the keenness in the oval of her face. From it rose one backward-sweeping ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... between them and the water. Many hills were covered with a thin forest of oaks and very little underbrush. At a distance the ground appeared as if carefully trimmed for occupation, especially as it had a few open places like fields. In the sere and yellow leaf of autumn these groves were charming, and I presume they are equally so in the fresh verdure ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... quod tantis apud se suosque posteros virtutibus praemium deesset, Statuam hanc ex sere publico erigendam curaverunt. ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... years previously when Matthew Cuthbert had driven down over the hill with what Mrs. Rachel called "his imported orphan." But that had been in springtime; and this was late autumn, and all the woods were leafless and the fields sere and brown. The sun was just setting with a great deal of purple and golden pomp behind the dark woods west of Avonlea when a buggy drawn by a comfortable brown nag came down the hill. Mrs. ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... still the same—where'er we tread, The wrecks of human power we see, The marvel of all ages fled, Left to decay and thee. And still let man his fabrics rear, August in beauty, grace, and strength,— Days pass, thou 'Ivy never sere,'[6] And all is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... uphold me, lingering and languishing here, A pale late plant of your once strong stock?" I say to them; "A thinker of crooked thoughts upon Life in the sere, And on That which consigns men to night after showing the ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy |
